Friday, October 16, 2009

Freedom to choose

I like open source software but I think that the Linux community shouldn't try to force every application to be open source. The important thing about Linux is that we have the freedom to choose. We can choose from many different Linux distributions and applications. We as users get to say what we want installed on our computers and what we don't. However, forcing everyone to use open source software is against the idea of freedom to choose. Everyone should have a choice and if you are running Linux and you choose to run proprietary software that is your option. Linux is about choice and freedom and I think we shouldn't take that away from anyone. Even from the people who are supporting proprietary software. The Linux community needs to be a little bit more tolerant of other users as well. Linux is open source but you can run a lot of proprietary software on it. It seems that some applications especially very technical ones will never be open source. Personally I wish everything was open source but I don't want to force it on people. Lets be tolerant of proprietary software on Linux and also users freedom to choose what they want installed on their computers.

3 comments:

I totally agree. Althought Firefox comes standard on Ubuntu and is a decent browser, I personally don't like it. I use Opera and yes, I've been "reminded" here and there that what? you use Opera? but Opera is proprietary! So what! I say, I'm gonna use the browser I want and that's the end of it!Vive la liberté d'expression! Vive la liberté de choix!

I like it to have a free alternativ to proprietary stuff. Just an example from using a 64bit built: Until recently there was no 64bit port of e.g. Flash (yeah I know flash sucks anyway, so no big loss;-)). There were workarounds with a 32bit layer and such, but that went against my intention to use 64bit in the first place. I was happy to have something like swdec or gnas, (limited as they were)

Btw. I made similar experiences being called names when stating I tried to preserve as much freedom as possible on my linux box. So, both sides shouldn't make such a bis fuss about this topic I guess. ;-)